Execution Of the Unhappy Men who Suffered this Morning at Newgate

Execution broadside printed with an account of the crimes, trial and execution of Charles Jones (aged 24), convicted of forgery, Ann Chapman (aged 28) convicted of attempting to strangle her infant child and Edward Turner (aged 19), Thomas Crowther (aged 18) and Mary Stephens convicted of highway robbery. The broadside notes that Stephens was reprieved from execution and transported. Printed by James Catnach the broadside includes a generic woodcut engraving of the gallows and the crowd and concludes with moral verses .

Until 1868 public hangings were a popular form of entertainment for the London crowd. Such occasions provided an opportunity for cheap printers and street vendors to 'turn a penny on the street' by selling accounts of the crimes, trial and 'dying speeches' of executed criminals as souvenirs to the baying spectactors. As soon as the trap fell the street vendors began running amongst the crowd selling the broadsides. Execution broadsides were published by a small number of printers many of whom, such as Thomas Birt, James Catnach and James Pitts were based around the Seven Dials area of London. Spelling and grammar was often poor and the details not always accurate. Up to 250,000 copies of such broadsides were quickly run off the printing presses to satisfy the public's appetite for celebrity and sensation. Although usually printed between the end of the trial and the date of the execution (usually a gap of a few weeks) they could often be quickly changed to accomodate last minute information such as reprieves and dying confessions. Type-faces were used so often that they were often ' worn to a degree of indecipherability that hid their almost complete irrelevance to the text they were supposed to illustrate.' Battered woodcuts used for the gallows scene comprised a stock block with a pierced central section to allow the sex and required number of hanging figures to be changed as required. Female criminals were depicted by using a block for a male figure, cut square at the knee to represent a skirt.